


Object Lesson

by SylvanWitch



Series: Proving the Exception [11]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: After the Third Bond fic, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 01:40:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Never gossip about Level Seven Bonded S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.  Or, Phil and Clint are BAMF thespians.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Object Lesson

**Author's Note:**

> I'd imagined this was set sometime shortly after S.H.I.E.L.D. had officially released Phil and Clint for field duty once more and before the events of _In the Bleak Midwinter_. It's unabashedly crack-tastic, which isn't my usual flavor, but I had a great time writing it.

The mistake was in thinking that Phil and Clint didn’t have any privacy in their own heads and hearts.  Of course they didn’t always communicate by thought or image, any more than ordinary couples constantly talked to one another or sent texts.

It was a ridiculous myth of Bonding that the couple was always sharing each another’s mental wanderings.  How would either of them get anything done if he was always listening to the other’s thoughts?

Still, when they went to the commissary for lunch or walked the halls together, went to the motor pool to look in on Lola or left HQ at the same time, murmurs followed them like wind passing through an uncut field. 

At first, Clint had found it kind of funny.  People talked about him before the Bond, too, so he didn’t let it ruffle him that they had a new reason to gossip.  But when he realized how much it was bothering Phil to always be the center of prurient attention, it started to get to Clint as well.

“We could give them something to really talk about,” Clint had suggested, a wicked gleam in his eye the only indication that he was plotting mischief.  The rest of his face was wearing his patented _I could kill you but I don’t feel like getting up_ look, the one he usually put on when sitting in public places.

Phil gave him an eyebrow, sighed, and gave in.  “What did you have in mind?”

Which is how it was that they ended up making out like possessed porn stars on the bridge of the Helicarrier during an emergency evacuation drill, when all personnel were supposed to be securing their stations and heading for the nearest exit.  Instead, they were watching Clint and Phil.

“I. Can’t. Stop. Feeling. You.” Clint growled in his best Captain Kirk imitation.  They were, after all, on the bridge of a high-tech flying machine.

Phil, typically, said nothing, but he grasped Clint harder, shoved his tongue further down Clint’s throat, and let out a moan that would’ve made Natasha herself blush, had she been there to witness this particular display.

Then Phil pulled his face away, just far enough that Clint--and everyone in a ten-foot radius--could see it clearly, and allowed a series of intense expressions to cross his face.

Clint frowned back, eyebrows moving wildly, lips and eyes, every muscle of his face getting into the act.

They broke apart as if having “heard” something alarming, Phil’s hand going to his chest as if he’d been hurt, Clint dropping his eyes and letting his shoulders droop.

Phil staggered to a monitor and turned his back as if collecting himself, staring at the blip-blip of the green line that measured some energy reading or other from the earth below them, his brow furrowed like he was attempting to divine the secrets of the universe.  Or maybe passing a particularly painful kidney stone.

Clint swallowed the laugh that threatened to ruin the effect of their show and instead pretended to have to stop himself from reaching toward Phil, who spun around so swiftly that he startled the enrapt technician to his left and made the security officer stationed at the door jump a little and reach for his sidearm.

Phil’s expression was heart-rending enough that Clint had to remember momentarily that they were play-acting.  His lover looked as though Clint had betrayed him in the worst possible way, as though he’d riven into Clint’s private thoughts so far as to dislodge the most pernicious and perfidious secret.

Clint let his face crumble and dropped to his knees like he’d been clothes-lined, every line of his face, the tremble of his lips, the prickling tears at the corners of his eyes signaling his abject apology.

Phil crossed his arms and glared, and from behind him, Clint heard the agent on the comms monitor squeak.  He didn’t blame her; Phil’s _Agent Coulson is not amused_ look was enough to give even Clint pause, despite knowing that it was all an act.

Clint was just about to crawl across the floor of the bridge to kneel at Phil’s feet and beg when Nick Fury swept through the door and intoned in carefully clipped syllables, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Agents?”

Phil turned a precise eyebrow up at Nick’s inquiry while Clint rose to his feet with the grace born of a thousand hours of practice and offered his own perfect smirk.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Nick growled, hand going up in a helpless gesture of frustration.  His eye scanned the bridge, every person on it completely ignoring his or her duties in favor of staring, in some cases open-mouthed, at the drama playing out in front of them.

“They deserved it, sir,” Clint said.

Phil said nothing, but his dancing blue eyes communicated aptly enough that he had been entirely, one hundred percent on board with this particular object lesson.

“Get back to work,” Fury barked then, earning another squeak from the nervous comms officer.  "And shut off that goddamned alarm."

The silence that followed was tense, almost deafening, as Fury's eye once more scoured over the assembled crew.  With a particularly bitter, “You’ve been punked,” followed by muttering under his breath about S.H.I.E.L.D. standards having obviously been relaxed with the latest bunch of recruits, Fury stalked off the bridge, leather duster swirling dramatically behind him as Clint and Phil, wearing identical expressions of the canary-sated cat, left the bridge in his wake.

After that, when Agents Barton and Coulson passed them in the halls or commissary or motor pool or lobby, conversation ceased.  Faces went carefully neutral, eyes avoided their own, and if Clint’s hand drifted down to casually brush Phil’s ass on the way out the front door, no one—absolutely _no one_ —talked about it the next day.


End file.
